Notes from the Cracked Ceiling

HILLARY CLINTON, SARAH PALIN,

AND WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR

A WOMAN TO WIN

Anne E. Kornblut

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Copyright © 2009 by Anne E. Kornblut

All rights reserved.Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www .crownpublishing .com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Photograph Creditspage 136 (Janet Napolitano) and page 170 (Nancy Pelosi): Was hington Post; page 208 (Meg Whitman): AP Photo/Steve Yeater; page 226 (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf): AP Photo/George Osodi

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Kornblut, Anne E. Notes fr om the cracked ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and what it will take for a woman to win / Anne E. Kornblut.—1st ed. p. cm. 1. Women in politics—United States. 2. Women presidential candidates—United States. 3. United States—Politics and government—2001–2009. 4. Presidents—United States—Election—2008. I. Title. HQ1236.5.U6K67 2010 324.973'0931—dc22

2009036286

ISBN 978- 0- 307- 46425- 5

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Elizabeth Rendfl eis ch

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

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Contents

i n t r odu c t ion Year of the Woman? 1

c h a p t e r 1 Tough Enough 13

c h a p t e r 2 Under Siege 57

c h a p t e r 3 Hunting Season 89

c h a p t e r 4 The Prosecutors 137

c h a p t e r 5 Mother of Five in Pearls 171

c h a p t e r 6 eMeg and the Business Boom 209

c h a p t e r 7 Why Women Run (and Don’t) 227

c h a p t e r 8 What Will It Take? 247

NOTES 25 5

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS 265

INDEX 27 1

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1

Introduction

Year of the Woman?

In the last days of the 2008 presidential election, my newspaper, the Was hington Post, ran a fr ont- page story

announcing that it had bee n the “Year of the Woman.” Th e ar-ticle was full of upbeat quotes fr om the usual suspects in the women’s movement celebrating the barrier- breaking triumphs of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Th e trails that had bee n blazed! Th e ceilings almost shatt ered!

It was a heartw arming picture— at fi rst.But in hindsight, 2008 turned out to be just the opposite

for women: a severe letdown, with damaging consequences. It revived old ste reo ty pes, divided the women’s movement, drove apart mothers and daughters, and set back the cause of equality in the po liti cal sphere by de cades.

How?

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It wasn’t just that Clinton lost the Demo cratic nomination, and then Palin lost the vice presidency, in rapid succession. It was that they lost in such resounding, devastating ways. Th eir candidacies unleashed virulent strains of sexism across the coun-try that many had thought were already eradicated.

Even that dated term, sexis m, was insuffi cient to describe the hostility they provoked. Women, aft er all, were among their fi ercest critics. Clinton, the former First Lady, and Palin, the pop u lar Alaska governor, were transformed into living cari-catures by men and women, liberals and conservatives, the young and the old— their fl aws distorted beyond the point of recognition, their personalities mocked to the core. Each of them received the kind of national ridicule that is generally reserved for philandering politicians (like John Edwards or Mark Sanford) or corrupt ones (like Rod Blagojevich) rather than for legitimate if fl awed candidates whose greatest sin was having the audacity to run— or, in Clinton’s case, continu-ing to run aft er it appeared highly likely she was going to lose. Even Michelle Obama, not herself on any ballot, had to fend off accusations that she was too “strong” or too “angry” as she campaigned alongside her husband, eventually toning down dramatically her persona as a caree r woman.

Th e Clinton and Palin candidacies also dealt a blow to the remnants of the women’s movement— and pitt ed women against one another everywhere. Traditional Demo cratic wom-en’s groups splintered during the primaries— some backing Clinton, others backing Senator Barack Obama, igniting in-ternal warfare. Conservative women broke apart a few months later as they struggled with the question of whether to stand by Palin. Th e conservative- leaning columnist Kathlee n Parker led the Republican defections, followed by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Stree t Journal, who disgustedly waved Palin off as an empty

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vessel who “doesn’t see m to understand the implications of her own thoughts.” Th e contrarian writer Camille Paglia, mean-while, praised the Alaska governor’s “fr ontier grit and audacity ,” and Elaine Laff erty , a former editor of Ms. Magazine and Clin-ton supporter, showed up onstage at a Palin rally.

In August, when word leaked that Obama might pick a woman other than Clinton as his running mate, her supporters erupted in outrage. Feminism, indee d. In late October, the dis-turbing notion that Senator John McCain, the Republican nom-inee , had picked Palin just because she was “hot” blossomed into a mainstream media subplot.

But perhaps the disconnect should not have bee n a surprise, given what had happened tw o years earlier, in 2006, when Nancy Pelosi made her historic ascent to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. Th at was supposed to be the “Year of the Woman,” too. Pelosi had worked her way up the congres-sional leadership ranks the old- fashioned way— by earning the loyalty of her pee rs and spearheading a massive fund- raising blitz that fueled the Demo cratic takeover of Congress. It was the fi rst time a woman had ever won the position, and it put Pelosi second in line to the presidency, making her the most successful woman ever in U.S. politics. Her victory had broken

“the marble ceiling,” as she put it, and produced a triumphant image: a sixty - six- year- old grandmother standing at the fr ont of the House chamber, wielding the gavel, in charge.

Yet Pelosi’s victory masked a larger truth: 2006 was a ter-rible year for female candidates overall. Numerous women running in close contests— most of them well- fi nanced, quali-fi ed, and talented— had lost. By one mea sure, just 11 percent of the Demo cratic women in targeted House races won their races, compared with 95 percent of the men in similar contests. Overall, in both parties, eigh tee n women ran in districts with

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open seats, and fi ft y- three women ran as challengers. But of those seventy - one candidates, only ten women won— a pathetic rate of return.

Th e losses were stunning. Pelosi told me she had bee n count-ing on a number of new female House members to help reclaim the Demo cratic majority , and the chairman of the Demo cratic Congressional Campaign Committ ee at the time, Representa-tive Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, had personally recruited strong women to run. In an article earlier that year, the New York Times had predicted a possible “revenge of the mommy party .” Female candidates were see n as especially appealing in light of the re-cent Jack Abramoff scandal, in which the indicted lobbyist had curried favor with lawmakers during testosterone- heavy golf-ing trips and nights on the town. “In an environment where people are disgusted with politics in general, who represents clean and change?” Emanuel was quoted as saying. “Women.”

And then all but a few lost. (Incumbents fared much bett er, with most kee ping their seats, but that did not change the ratio.) Th e defeats were quickly swept under the rug— no one wanted to dwell on such a negative trend— but they were an important harbinger of what lay ahead.

And Speaker Pelosi, the highest- ranking woman ever to serve in Congress? Over time, her popularity sank, so that by late 2009, in one poll, more Americans viewed her unfavorably than favorably— not coincidentally, aft er she had bee n demon-ized in ways that the other top congressional Demo crats, such Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, had not. Called “crazy” and

“mean as a snake” and “Tom DeLay in a skirt” by one especially vehement Republican, and a “hag” and a “bitch” by talk radio commentators, Pelosi was even the subject of a Republican at-tack video that compared her to the James Bond villain Pussy Galore. Th e Republican National Committ ee never apologized

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for the off ensive imagery, though it appeared later to take it down fr om YouTube. Overall, the incident barely caused a blip.

Far and wide, double standards have persisted since the Clinton and Palin defeats in 2008. When Caroline Kennedy an-nounced her interest in being appointed to fi ll Clinton’s New York Senate seat later that year, a barrage of anger rained down— how presumptuous of the member of a po liti cally con-nected family, who graduated at the top of her Columbia Law School class, to think she was qualifi ed to hold the temporary caretaker job. Kennedy was mocked for her spee ch patt erns, especially her repeated use of the phrase “you know,” as if she were the fi rst po liti cal fi gure to have a verbal tic, and for having a less than fully developed platform of policy ideas. When she fi nally withdrew fr om consideration, aides to New York Gover-nor David Paterson— anonymously—spread false rumors telling reporters it was over a “tax problem” and a “nanny issue.”

Paterson—under pressure to replace Clinton with a woman— wound up picking Kirsten Gillibrand, an upstate congress-woman who came under att ack for being too ambitious and earned the nickname Tracy Flick aft er Ree se Witherspoon’s perky , ruthless student politician in the movie Election. Mean-while, Roland Burris quickly took his seat in the Senate, replac-ing Barack Obama despite being selected by an Illinois governor indicted on corruption charges and being caught on a wiretap sounding as if he were bargaining for the appointment.

Similarly, Timothy Geithner sailed through his confi rma-tion as Trea sury secretary despite a failure to pay back taxes while Nancy Killefer, with a smaller back- tax blight on her record, withdrew her nomination as per for mance czar. Sonia Sotomayor withstood accusations of being “strident” and “sharp- tongued” and “testy ” throughout her Supreme Court confi rma-tion hearings— though under closer examination it appeared

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she was simply opinionated, not unlike Supreme Court Jus-tice Antonin Scalia. At the same time, Sotomayor’s detractors questioned whether she would be too “empathetic” a justice— relying too heavily on her experiences as a woman and a Latina— even though Justice Samuel Alito, in his confi rmation hearings a few years earlier, had promised to draw on his own Italian background.

Th e original “year of the woman”— 1992—had bee n born out of anger. Women, outraged at the dismissive reception Anita Hill received when she accused Clarence Th omas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confi rmation hearings, ran for offi ce in record numbers the following year. And women voted for them. Th e number of women in the U.S. Senate tripled; tw enty - four new women were elected to the House. It was a “breakthrough” year, supposedly a harbinger of greater strides that would soon lead to the presidency.

And then it wasn’t. It turned out that 1992 was just a fl ash in the pan, a brief surge that “ended up doing relatively litt le for women overall,” according to Marie Wilson, who runs the White House Project, an or ga ni za tion devoted to putt ing women in the po liti cal pipeline. In fact, the electoral surge of 1992, and the “year of the woman” label, had encouraged a complacent mentality : it fed the illusion that women were on an irreversible upward trajectory.

In reality , 1992 was followed by a series of slow increases that have, by now, tapered off . From certain angles, women appear already to have peaked. Women in statewide offi ces— such as governor or lieutenant governor— reached a record rate, 27.6 percent, in 2001. Today, it is back down to around

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23 percent, where it was more than a de cade ago. Women are 50 percent of the population but 17 percent of the Congress. Women are one- third less likely than men to be recruited—or even encouraged— to run for offi ce in the fi rst place.

Women have gained a net seat here or there over the years, but never in meaningful numbers. “We had high expectations in 2006, but then it was kind of a very, very incremental vic-tory. Same with 2008,” said Clare C. Giesen, executive direc-tor of the National Women’s Po liti cal Caucus. (In 2008, the success rate for nonincumbent female House candidates was about the same: sixty - fi ve such women ran, of whom just eleven won.) “And I think that’s the way it’s going to be fr om now on. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a ‘year of the woman’ again. I think women are just going to have to hang in there.”

Th e numbers are especially grim for Republicans: women are in just 15.8 percent of the GOP- held offi ces at the state level, which fee d the pipeline into national politics— down fr om 19.1 percent at the peak in 1995. Th e party fi elded a stunningly small proportion of female candidates— just 6 percent of the total— for open House seats in 2008. Th e proportion of women in the House Republican caucus has also shrunk, to less than 10 percent.

While there are much- celebrated gains, such as the recent election of a majority of women to the New Hampshire state senate, there are litt le- mentioned black holes, places where the number of women is inexplicably shrinking. In Rhode Island, the number of women in the legislature has fallen signifi cantly, fr om a historic high of thirty - nine in the general assembly in the 1990s to tw enty - four in 2009. In South Carolina, aft er the 2008 election, there were suddenly no female state senators— none.

Public opinion has stalled in some respects as well. Twenty - fi ve percent of all Americans see men as “bett er suited

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emotionally for politics” than most women— much less than the more than 40 percent who felt that way in the 1970s but higher today than in 1993, when only 20 percent of the country saw men as bett er suited emotionally.

And of course, it is worth repeating, because it has bee n so oft en forgott en amid the excitement of 2008: a woman has never bee n elected president or vice president, or chosen as the presidential nominee of a major party .

It is a global distinction. Th e share of women in offi ce in the United States is smaller than in more than seventy countries in the world, fr om Cuba to Rwanda to Norway. Th e U.S. ranking of women in politics is dropping while women’s po liti cal partici-pation elsewhere is growing. Th ere are fewer women in the U.S. Congress today than in the assembly of Af ghan i stan, otherwise considered one of the most regressive countries in the world.

But if the advancement of women into the upper echelons of politics has tapered off , shrinking the pool of potential can-didates for the presidency and other prominent offi ces, there is an even more perplexing phenomenon: few people see m to care.

Th e basic vibe over the last tw o years has bee n one of progress, change, and opportunity — and in that spirit there is a sunny belief that a woman will be elected to the White House soon. Th at assumption made sense in the summer of 2007, when Hillary Clinton was the Demo cratic fr ont- runner, but it has continued even aft er her defeat— as if her simply having run had somehow produced concrete gains. Never mind that, aft er Geraldine Ferraro’s losing vice presidential campaign, in 1984, more than tw o de cades passed without a woman on a major party ticket. Now, optimists say, a female president is surely right around the corner.

Th e optimism is at odds with the evidence— Clinton, the most well- funded, well- connected, and famous female candidate

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conceivable, was roundly driven fr om the presidential scene, and Sarah Palin’s prospects in 2012 look even worse given her abrupt resignation fr om Alaska’s governorship in the summer of 2009— but it is prevalent. Women are everywhere, fr om the boardroom to the ivory tower, aren’t they? Hasn’t gender equality bee n achieved, certainly more than racial equality ? No doubt, the thinking goes, an America capable of electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama will have no prob-lem electing a woman president any day now, especially given that there are even fewer nonwhites in politics than there are women. In one poll right aft er the 2008 election, 85 percent of adults surveyed said they thought they would see a female president in their lifetime, up fr om 54 percent in 1996. Th e al-lure of the “year of the woman” was strong, it turned out, even if it was elusive.

In the years leading up to her campaign, Clinton was oft en asked in interviews whether the country was ready to elect the fi rst woman president.

“Well, we won’t know until we try,” she said cautiously.So is the answer, aft er the 2008 election, simply “No”?I began struggling with that question for the fi rst time

toward the end of the 2008 election season, aft er covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign for tw o years (and then Barack Obama’s, aft er Clinton got out of the race). Even as a woman covering mostly male politicians in Washington for the previ-ous decade— including tw o prior presidential campaigns— I had never really dwelled on the gender aspect of politics before. Th e partisan fr ame see med to trump the gender fr ame: it made more sense to think of Clinton in terms of the Demo cratic party ,

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her health care legacy, her New York record, and the baggage of her husband’s administration than to untangle what it meant that she had bee n a woman running for president. She was Hill-ary Clinton, aft er all. When Sarah Palin came along, the same thing was more or less true: she was criticized as a social con-servative and a fi rst- term governor, with gender playing a back- burner role in the discussion when the Republican ticket lost.

But as I looked back across the landscape of the 2008 presidential campaign— a batt lefi eld litt ered with gender- related detritus, with charges of sexism, the phrases “she- devil” and “pit bull with lipstick” and “lipstick on a pig” and “likable enough” and “Caribou Barbie” and “baby mama” scatt ered everywhere— it began to fee l insuffi cient simply to chalk the Clinton and Palin defeats up to routine politics and historical accident. Th ey may not have lost because they were women— and no one, in the dozens and dozens of interviews I conducted, ever argued they had— but their sex played an outsize role in the year’s events, coloring every decision they made, every pub-lic perception, and every reaction by their campaigns.

It was no small thing that Palin was chosen exclusively by men, in an eff ort to win women, her strategy devised by men who had never run a woman for a high- level offi ce before. Nor was it a minor factor that Clinton had spent so much time think-ing about gender— overthinking it, arguably— and concluded that she had to run with masculine toughness, modeling herself on the British “Iron Lady” Prime Minister Margaret Th atcher.

What follow here are refl ections on those decisions and many others, and on the po liti cal climate that produced such emphatic defeats for women in 2008. It is an examination of the mistakes Clinton and Palin made as women— and the mistreatment that, as women, they endured. A tour through the rest of the po liti-cal landscape follows, examining questions about women now

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in power: How did Nancy Pelosi overcome the dilett ante label to lead Congress, despite the initial dismissiveness of men who admired her simply for her looks? Who pays a “mommy penalty ” for having children in public life, and why? Why are women so tough on other women? Why are there so many female elected offi cials who have survived breast cancer? What does former Sec-retary of State Condolee zza Rice, the highest ranking Afr ican- American woman in history, think of the dueling challenges of race and gender in politics?

Th roughout I have interviews with some of the most promi-nent women in politics today— and introduce some who are running for higher offi ce or laying the groundwork for a presi-dential campaign down the road.

Some, like Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and the businesswoman Meg Whitman of California, are still relatively unknown. But the problems they face are familiar, and serve as a warning: the po liti cal culture does not take women as seriously as we would like to think. Th e glass ceiling may be cracked, as Hillary Clin-ton declared at the end of her presidential campaign. But it is far fr om broken. And if no one asks why it wasn’t— and isn’t— it may never be.

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Notes From the Cracked Ceiling 

 

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